


An Epilogue: More Than One Way to Be Trapped in a Tree

by Antrodemus



Category: The Sword in the Stone (1963)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 09:23:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8974021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antrodemus/pseuds/Antrodemus
Summary: I can't be the only one who has been bothered by the wound left by this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly4qaiMM70A





	

Wakefulness came to Arthur slowly and miraculously. No pain. He didn't want to remember the last time he awoke without the booming throb of his joints, the white-hot jab of old war wounds, lest calling it to mind invite the pain to come sliding back, grinning like an old friend. He kept his eyes closed. The battle. He'd remembered the last battle, the horrible senseless tragedy of it, the feeling of trying to hold back a foam-flecked wave with his hands, a sword...

He kept his eyes closed. Still, the pain did not come. He would wake all the way to the saturated smell of blood and the groans of the dying not caring whose side they were on. Soon. Let him have this moment of peace. He had worked so hard to make a better reality for his people, a place of surcease from war. He'd worked every moment. He'd given everything. He could have this one moment, just this one moment, where the reality he'd wanted to push away didn't come crashing down to reclaim him, punishing and the people he'd loved for his... what did his tutor call it?... his _hybris._ One moment before dawn, that's it, and never mind a happily ever after.

The pain did not come, nor did the cries of the dying, nor the cold. In fact... it was warm. Warm, and the light that stubbornly pressed through his eyelids was strong and bright, not the thready, smoky gloom of bleak midwinter Camlann. Something smelled... wonderful, like life and home and... it was overwhelming, complex and nutty, green and right. _That's sap,_ thought Arthur, _That's sap rising to meet summer. Where have I smelled sap like that before? I haven't smelled anything like this since... since..._ He risked opening an eye. He was resting on fur... no, it was warm. He was resting his chin on his own ruddy haunch. He gave a leap that might have been called balletic, a thousand years later, opening his eyes and finding himself hanging almost upside-down from the ceiling of the hollow of a tree. He swished his tail. What a tail it was! "Merlin!" he crowed. "Merlin, you old!" From the same crack as that wonderful sunlight, he heard a chattering contralto chuckle and an almost-convincing huff answering it, "Madame! I do not _need_ to have my ears groomed, nor do I... well, if you must..." Arthur... was he Arthur, or was he the Wart again? Did it matter? He climbed frisking to the entrance of the hole. Frisking was easier than he remembered. He didn't know how long he had. All the more reason to make the most of it. How long since he had run, just run for for being able to run and the joy of speed? Up and down the tree trunks, dizzy with the OOF. He chittered angrily at the wall of fur that entangled him, which was giving him a fairly lengthy piece of its very irritated mind as they attempted to untwine. And... reader, you know what is coming after "suddenly," don't you? Suddenly, he found himself nose to nose with a face that was finally pausing to take a breath... breath that felt stolen right from him. The eyes were kind, and even though they had gained age, a depth of sadness and experience that had not been there ages ago, before his innocence died spatchcocked on the throne... those were eyes he had could not forget, even though he had not thought of them for decades. This was a mouth that hung upon, mid-chide. It's her, he thought. _No, I mean, it's she. No. It's_ you.

He'd never had children of his own to raise. By the scent of it, neither had she. 

Carefully, he put his paws on her nose. She put her paws on his and pushed him away pulling away away with a flirt of her own beautiful tail, and his world crumbled, pain lancing through his chest, the strength to stand leaving his legs, he crumpled too.

An impatient chirrup. She was a few feet away now, clinging vertically to some bark-wrinkled oak and looking over her shoulder as if to say, "Well?" A faint echo of a memory drifted into his mind... "Well, I'm afraid you're stuck, lad... when a girl squirrel chooses a mate, it's for life..." The breath came back into him. He swallowed, and keeping his face gobsmacked, tensed like a coiled spring and, without warning, leapt into the chase after her. She scrabbled around the tree. Eventually, she slowed down just enough, because she had been waiting a very, very long time to run just fast enough for him to catch her. And there was a moment. And a a happily ever after. Or two.


End file.
